India's Anthem

© Prakash João Maskaren. Revised 1st. Feb., 2003. This page is copyright.
Since some years a malicious email has been circulated by the agents provocateur of Hindu fascism which basely attacks the official state anthem of the Indian Union as being in praise, not of God or the motherland, but king George V of Hanover, his wife and his mother. (See a sample here.)

Not only has a deliberate campaign of disinformation has been lauched by these criminals and traitors, but they even go so far as to shamelessly libel and slander some of the greatest leaders of the Indian independence movement, people such as Ravindranath Thakur, Motilal Nehru-Kaul and his son, Jawaharlal Nehru-Kaul, who, unlike the leaders of Hindu fascism, collaborators and quislings such as Savarkar or the present Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Bajpai, etc., actively resisted and fought the English imperialists and made great sacrifices for the freedom of India from England.

The 'National' Anthem of the Indian Union was composed by the Nobel laureate Ravindranath Thakur (Rabindranath Tagore in his native Bengali), a Deist, and as a Deistic hymn, and goes: Jana gana mana adhinayaka, jaya he
      Bharata bhagya vidhata
Punjab Sindhu Gujarata Maratha
      Dravida Utkala Vanga
Vindhya Himachala Yamuna Ganga
      Ujwala Jaladhi taranga
Tava shubha name jage
      Tava shubha ashish maage
      Gaye tava jaya-gatha.

Jana gana mangala dayaka jaya he
      Bharata bhagya vidhata
Jaya he, jaya he, jaya he,
      Jaya jaya jaya, jaya he!

The Roman Transliteration is not phonetic.

The English Translation is as follows: Thou art the rulers of the minds of all people
Thou Dispenser of India's destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of the Punjab, Sind, Gujarat and the Maratha,
Of the Dravid, Orissa and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
Mingles in the music of the Yamuna and Ganga
And is chanted by the waves of the sea.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.

The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
Thou Dispenser of India's destiny,
Victory, victory, victory to thee.

Before this song was written, another song had been composed, the Vande Mataram, or "Salutations to the Goddess Mother India," an actively idolatrous hymn that found no favour with the Muslim or Christian Indians. It is because of its failure to appeal to all Indians, while Thakur's did, that caused the selection of the latter song as the official state anthem of the Indian Union following Independence.

However, the Hindu fascists have never given up hope of foisting their idolatrous song on India as its official anthem supplanting Thakur's composition, and they are willing to stoop to base falsehoods and the most utterly stupid lies in order to wean away the Indian people.

Nor is this campaign of lies and misinformation something new: it has gone on continuously since Independence and the adoption of Thakur's anthem.

The Hindu fascists allege that:

"India's national anthem was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honour of George V and his wife when they visited India in 1919.

To honor their visit Motilal Nehru had five stanzas included, which are in praise of the King and Queen.

In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, etc. were mentioned.

None of the princely states are mentioned, which are integral parts of India now - Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore or Kerala.

Neither the Indian ocean nor the Arabian Sea were included, since they were directly under Portuguese rule at that time.

The song implies that George V is the lord of the masses, the "Dispenser of India's destiny" and "the bestower of good fortune".

Nehru chose the present anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play.

It was an absurd reason but today, for that matter, bands have advanced and they can very well play any music.

So they can as well play Vande Mataram, which is a far better composition in praise of our dear Motherland - India."

Lies, Stupid Lies!

The level of ignorance in India, even among the 'educated' is phenomenal, which is why this campaign of lies has won many to the traitors' cause.

For one thing, the anthem was not, in fact, written in honour of George V. It was merely recited in an audience with him, as he presided as the guest of honour. The song is not addressed to him, and to allege or believe this is to do a great dishonour to the memory of Ravindranath Thakur.

Secondly, the song does not set out to catalog the provinces of 'British India' as it was in 1919; it is malicious and self-cultivated ignorance on the part of the allegants to allege this. The 1919 provinces of 'British India' did not include Sindh, Gujarat or Orissa. At that time, the first two were part of the province called the Bombay Presidency, and Orissa of the Bengal Presidency. Sindh and Orissa were created as provinces only in 1937, and Gujarat and Maharashtra - the province of the Mahrattas - were created only in 1961 - after Independence!

The vast majority of the provinces of 'British India' are not recorded by the anthem: Baluchistan, The North-West Frontier Province, The United Provinces of Agra & Oudh, the Province of Central India and Berar, the Bombay Presidency and the Madras Presidency, the provinces of Upper and Lower Burma, the province of Ceylon, etc.

As a matter of fact, Thakur's anthem mentions only two of the provinces that existed in 1919: Punjab, and the Bengal Presidency, which at the time included, besides the present West Bengal and East Bengal (Bangladesh), Bihar, Orissa (Utkal), Assam, and the hill districts of the Brahmaputra Basin - the present-day provinces of Arunachal, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Mizoram. Again, the Punjab of 1919 included the territory we today call 'Himachal' and which were separated only in 1961, while Thakur uses that name for the Himalaya mountains.

'British India' was certainly not confined to the banks and basins of the Ganga and the Yamuna, but also included territories watered by the Indus, the Hirawati (Irrawady), the Salween, the Narmada, Tapti, Krishna, Godavari, Kaveri, Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, etc., which were as important, if not more important than the Ganga-Yamuna system.

It requires insanity to believe the extraordinary fable that the Portuguese still controlled (in 1919!) the Indian Ocean or the Arabian Sea (or the Bay of Bengal, for that matter). The Portuguese had lost this maritime supremacy and monopoly centuries ago when they had been harried and defeated by the Dutch, and subsequently maritime monopoly had been seized by the English.

The reason Nehru and the majority of the leaders of the Independence movement chose Thakur's anthem over the Vande Mataram was not the rather ingenious lie that they found the former easier for bands to play, but for the fundamental reasons that the latter was and is offensive and unacceptable to the non-Hindu peoples of India!

Prakash Mascarenhas
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